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Simon is a seasoned winemaker who created Astrolabe wines together with his wife Jane. Simon crafts a range of beautiful wines that express the purity and intensity of fruit flavours afforded by the climate and soils of the Marlborough…

Simon Waghorn is a winemaker. Astrolabe Wines is a winemaker label.
Astrolabe was created in 1996, and is a culmination of a winemaking career that began in 1982. All Simon’s skill and experience combine to capture the essence of Marlborough…

Astrolabe Farm is Jane and Simon's own vineyard, situated in the lower Wairau Valley in Grovetown. Originally planted by the Inder family, this vineyard provided the Chardonnay fruit for the first release of an Astrolabe wine in 1997. This vineyard produces…

Astrolabe Wines is proud to be fully committed to producing wines sustainably.
All aspects of our production are sustainably certified under the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand programme, including all vineyards, the winery and the bottling line.…

Named after the ship that in 1827 charted and explored the Marlborough Coast, Astrolabe is a personal project for winemaker Simon Waghorn and his wife, Jane. Astrolabe produces a range of wines that express the purity and intensity of fruit flavours naturally…

Simon’s winemaking career began in South Australia and took him and his family from Te Kauwhata to Gisborne, eventually settling in Marlborough. In 1996, together with old friends Paul Davenport and Sally Lewis, Simon and his wife Jane decided to…

Our grapes are sourced entirely from unique Marlborough sites to add layers of complexity to our wines. Each site was chosen for the distinctive flavour it produces. We work with dedicated growers who understand the rhythms of the land and know how to…

As well as being a navigational instrument, L’Astrolabe was the name of the ship of French explorer Dumont d’Urville who explored the Marlborough coast in 1827.
Simon chose the name Astrolabe because of the historic ties with Marlborough,…

We started the 2015-2016 growing season with the threat of a very dry harvest period, with the national climate scientists at NIWA indicating El Niño conditions could lead to drought over the harvest months. The season has had only about 62%…

This years’ harvest in Marlborough has been
one of the earliest, driest and warmest since I arrived in 1995.
Growing degree days were about 10% above
the long term average, and rainfall was only about 40% of normal.
The Astrolabe…

The dry Awatere Valley has a more extreme climate than most of Marlborough, with strong winds, variable soils, greater temperature fluctuations and a later ripening season. Vines are planted from sea level to quite high altitude, and the scarceness of…

Down by the mild ocean spring breaks early, and the vines leaf out before the rest of Marlborough. Cool winds from the sea prolong the growing season, and the grapes are the last harvested in the province. The limestone in the soil, and the long growing…

The Richmond Ranges to the northwest protect our largest valley from the wet winds off the Tasman Sea, and sunshine is high, temperatures mild, humidity low, and soils well-drained and moderately fertile. On the broad valley floor underground water is…

All Along our shores, holding fast to the rocks at low tide, is the seaweed Durvillea, named after the Captain of L'Astrolabe Dumont d'Urville. For me, this seaweed defines the ruggedness of our rocky coast.
The Durvillea grapes are grown at carefully…

Durvillea antarctica is the scientific name for the seaweed commonly known as bull kelp or rimurapa. Durvillea grows all along New Zealand’s southern coasts, holding fast to the rocks at low tide. Ever since I studied seaweed at University it…